


a way a lone a last a loved a long

by loosedindecember



Category: Black Sails
Genre: 4.09 flashbacks AU because of course it is, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Disabled Character, Canon is cool but just let me have this, Circular Ending, Hopeful Ending, John Silver has trust issues, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, maritime imagery, self-indulgent fic, treasure island? i don't know her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:34:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28006242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loosedindecember/pseuds/loosedindecember
Summary: “What are you afraid of?” Flint asks.“Right now, I am afraid that regardless of your pretty speech, you are going to keep heaving that fucking rock up that fucking mountain with no regard for what you crush underneath it.” His stare is as intent and intimate as it has ever been. “Including yourself.”Flint tells one more story.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/John Silver, background Madi/John Silver
Comments: 12
Kudos: 32





	a way a lone a last a loved a long

**Author's Note:**

> title from the last line of Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, which is left hanging and flows directly back into the first sentence. i tried something similar here. feedback is appreciated!

The future clenches and beckons beyond them.

Their departure wends nearer; Silver is improving, though today he has been—not _unusually_ circumspect, but taciturn, eyes less focused, mind plainly leagues away. Flint, having become at some uncertain point the reluctant custodian of John Silver’s clues, has observed how his shoulders loosen as he takes up the crutch, how his chest expands as if free and unconstrained, how light he becomes even deep in concentration. It has become plainer every day that his role in their nascent war is a burden to Silver, and Flint, finding himself, his _words_ , wanting, has hoped that these hours of exertion, of separation from the taut, anticipatory energy of the camp, might be enough to settle him.

His disquiet today is alarming.

“Someone told me once that there are no legacies in this life,” Flint says, laying his sword down. He is winded, and tries not to show it. “But Long John Silver may yet prove him wrong. I know that disturbs you.”

Silver’s answering smile chills, as Flint had expected it to. “How I feel about it no longer signifies. There is no disassociating the fiction from the fact now.”

Flint feels little satisfaction at this validation of his suspicions, but Silver has bitten at his bait, if splenetically, and he is fain to take whatever chance is offered him. To do what, he cannot quite articulate even to himself—not, as their previous encounter has taught him, to attempt to draw back the curtain on Silver’s story; not to attempt to convince him that Flint is not still unsettled by what he had refused to reveal. Whatever he thinks to say will not be enough for a sea-change in Silver's outlook; beneath the bluster, Flint sees a man who does not want to matter, nor to be remembered, because it will mean that he _was_.

But when he thinks of the coming fortnight and what they plan to accomplish, the notion of any disunity between himself and Silver sends a frisson of foreboding up his spine.

Silver had asked, bluntly, if his friendship and loyalty could be enough to keep their fragile trust from shattering. Flint has turned the question over and over in his mind since then, and failed to answer it. In this moment, with Silver close enough to touch, wary but attentive, Flint wonders for the first time if perhaps Silver’s trust, and not his own, is in question.

“It was when I became Flint that I began clambering, sightless, up a very steep mountain, weighted by a very large stone,” Flint tells him. He sits on a low boulder, and watches Silver until he rolls his eyes and sits too. He watches, still, as Silver gathers his hair over one shoulder and combs through the sweat-tangled curls. “Every day for ten years I groped and clawed my way up, reaching the crown only to find myself at the foot again. Every bramble caught, every bloody scrape, every drop of sweat fused me to this mountain until I could not discern what was flesh and what was stone.”

Flint’s memories of that time, of his rebirth and first years, run together now like so much spilled ink. He remembers sending McGraw to his turbulent and unfulfilled death halfway across the Atlantic: Lycidas upon his watery bier, England and New Providence two black voids fore and aft. England, which contained and constrained that which he had desperately hoped to be his future, sentenced to the impermanence of memory. From there, it was a short and blissful slide into perdition.

Flint was born not only of rage and tragedy, but also of the sea. Flint is a man forged from salt water and sand and the unsettled bones of men and monsters consigned to the rustling deep. A man of movement, of constant roving, of striking cruelty and passion. He had come into the world craving England's blood, and every drop of it spilled had stoked his hunger. Still does, if he is honest with himself, but there is space within him now for other things: for regeneration, alongside the destruction.

“I can say with certainty that I have never known myself as simply as I did after Miranda’s death,” he continues, breathing around that familiar wrench of her loss. “It seemed to strip away the more complex parts of me, the ones that had begun to bend—as if they had become extraneous. You saw me: I ran on rarefied instinct. It was almost as if…”

“What?” Silver whispers, lowly enough to preserve the gossamer web Flint is weaving around them.

Flint has him, now, not only hearing but listening. He clasps his palms to keep them still. “As if time could move in both directions at once. For all I had thawed, begun to plan for some nebulous future, so swiftly was I brought low again, to the foot of that mountain where Flint was born. Perhaps time does move both ways. Not erasing anything, but… meeting itself. What you did for me, to return me to myself—it felt, at first, as though you were resurrecting James McGraw, and killing James Flint in equal measure. But then I came to know that I can no longer deny one in favour of the other. They are both me, incontrovertibly. You made me realize that. That cannot mean nothing.”

He has frightened Silver into stillness. His eyes are wide and watchful and swallowing.

“You are going to be remembered; there is no changing that now. When men become legends, they yield control over how they are perceived by history. But, Silver, hear this: the stories are mutable. Captain Flint is a hero to some and a devil to most others, but I am no more the Captain Flint the British condemn in their pamphlets than you are the Long John Silver that Billy made from whole cloth.”

Silver raises a disbelieving brow. “The man behind Captain Flint could, with time and distance, fade into obscurity. The man behind Long John Silver can’t,” he argues, toeing at his crutch.

Flint smiles. “I often forget you’ve not been long at sea. But you must have seen, on that merchant ship and in Nassau, the number of men missing limbs. It might not be so hard as you think.”

Silver scowls. Flint is struck, suddenly, by the desire to see Silver smile again.

“I pulled you into this,” Flint says. He does not say how fervently he does not regret it, how easy it is to brush the guilt aside. He has been so long in the darkness that he has mapped its every contour, butit is not company; Miranda had refused to submerge herself in it as he had; he had not known the extent of his starvation, of the absence of warmth, until Silver, wearing Dufresne’s still-cooling blood and a wretched expression, had confessed to him _how good it feels_. “When we have reached a point at which every day is not a crossroads or a crisis, I intend to be there to pull you back.”

Silver huffs. “Your inexperience in that area does not recommend you, but if we are, improbably, both alive and still together at that point, I am sure I’ll tolerate your efforts.”

“You’ll do more than that,” Flint says gruffly. Still together. As though he could be anywhere else while he still stalked the earth. “I’d be a fool to make promises when I have as little control over our fates as I do right now, but if my word has ever meant anything to you, you will believe me when I say that I would not commit so many lives to a hopeless endeavour. That I intend to survive this war, and that I intend for you and Madi to survive it, and that when we are done, I intend to be answerable only to you and her.”

Silver exhales, quick and harsh. It would be a laugh but for the slack confusion and helplessness on his face. His jaw works, mouth opens, but he swallows down whatever he had thought to say. 

“What are you afraid of?” Flint asks.

“Right now, I am afraid that regardless of your pretty speech, you are going to keep heaving that fucking rock up that fucking mountain with no regard for what you crush underneath it.” His stare is as intent and intimate as it has ever been. “Including yourself.”

Ah. 

“It must be abundantly clear to you,” Flint says carefully, “that I do not fear my own death—”

“That’s for fucking sure.”

Flint narrows his eyes, pitches forward. Silver leans in, too, as though Flint’s nearness is a flickering flame that draws him inexorably in. “I do not fear it,” Flint murmurs, showing his teeth, “but nor do I welcome it. I will do my utmost to stay it. All we can ever promise to one another is to fight like hell, and steal all the time we can get our hands on, and not let a fucking moment of it go to waste.”

There is more. Flint would take Silver’s fears, one by one, until he is left only with possibility. But he can see that Silver will surrender no more of his mind to him today: whatever it is he has buried, it will not be exhumed. To Silver, the choice between being known and being alone is as that between Scylla and Charybdis, and Flint's guts twist at the thought of how far Silver might be willing to go to thwart his own happiness.

“Trust yourself,” Flint says lowly, wishing to lay his lips over Silver’s shuttered eyelids. “Trust me.” His cheekbone. “Trust Madi.” His jaw. “Trust this.” His lips.

Silver shifts away, ducking his head.

Flint swallows, daring to push an inch further. “I see who you are right now, in this moment. Not a pirate king, not a fraudulent cook—" this startles a rusty laugh out of Silver "—but a man I trust as my partner. I think Madi perceives the same in you. You have the rest of your life to learn how to get used to that. To know you can have it. I want you to tell me if you think it would be worth it.”

He waits. And waits. He thinks Silver has never been this quiet.

“We are both filthy,” Silver observes eventually, gaze somewhere near Flint’s shoulder. “And it’s getting dark.”

It is not an answer; but then again, Flint has left his question unasked. The way Silver is looking at him, at his eyes now, steady and expectant—in his usual obfuscatory fashion, he might be answering an unasked question with one of his own. Today will not be the day that Flint, ever curious, starts to demur.

He follows Silver down through the scrubby grass of the hill, sun slipping below the horizon in shades of pink and orange at their backs. He follows Silver as he picks his way down to the estuary, walks along it until they are swallowed by the forest and the estuary, out of sight of the ocean, becomes a river. He and Silver do not speak, but the air about them drips with humidity and birdcall, the susurration of the breeze in the trees and the tumbling waters.

The whole world, it seems, stops to watch as Silver strips and wades leanly into the river to bathe. Braced against a rock breaching the surface of the water, indolent currents pulling and curling around his leg, hair unspooled and dripping, Silver looks more siren than man. Flint hungers.

Silver flicks a look at him and shifts steadier against the rock, as if in welcome. He returns to his unhurried washing as Flint shucks his clothes. The river is cool and tender, not biting; playful, not capricious. Flint steps further and feels smooth-worn shells give under his feet, sliding deeper into the sediment. Tomorrow, this will be a different river.

Silver allows him nearer, watching over his shoulder. Flint gets close enough to count the beads of water catching and slipping down Silver’s shoulders and arms. Bending, he dips his hands into the water and scrapes the salt from himself. When his skin is flushed and raw, he sits back on his heels and looks up: in the endless gloaming, Silver is vibrant and vital, and Silver is watching him, esurient.

Flint may be a pirate, but he is not a greedy man. More than bullion or jewels, he covets what has been denied him: a place to hang his coat, a steady living, a partner. Some share of peace. He is no closer than he was before to discovering whether Silver craves these things too, but in his experience, pastless men cannot easily visualize the future. Silver, he thinks, as he rises to meet him, is exceptionally present.

And exceptionally greedy.

Silver bursts across his tongue like a summer berry. He is slippery under Flint’s hands, and Flint is hesitant to firm his grip lest he slip away completely. But he presses against Flint's chest, sighs at his touch, arms banded tightly around his waist. He sinks his teeth into Flint's lip, the sting pulling a gasping hiss from Flint's throat.

Silver shivers, drawing Flint from the water, and Flint extends them down upon the moss. They roll and surge together and apart, crashing inexorably back together. He digs his fingers deep into Silver’s loamy curls, the shifting muscles of his back; Silver rocks against him, moans against him, works his bottom lip between his teeth and his hand between their heaving bodies.

This small death, as Silver pants and paints his chest with the detritus of the riverbed that clings to his fingers; as Silver’s hair frames his trembling banks like lush rushes; as Silver anoints him with their shared desire; as Silver returns again and again to his mouth. This, he will accept with grateful surrender. It is his pleasure, to be thus defeated by Silver.

* * *

“That was a shitty fucking metaphor, by the way,” Silver comments later, after they have lain in the moss long enough to warrant another trip to the river. His voice is clearer; he sounds more like himself.

“Hmm?”

“Sisyphus was made to choose between an endlessly fruitless task and hell,” Silver clarifies, stretching languidly. “Did you mean to imply that all along you knew your rage to be impotent, your rebellion to be ultimately futile?”

Flint barks a laugh. “For the better part of this last decade, I knew the day would come when I would either fall or jump willingly from the precipice. I knew that, regardless of any constructive outcome of my actions, there could be no undoing them. No matter what choice I ultimately made, I would be choosing between one hell and another.” He glances at Silver, whose eyes are dark and searching, dusky brows drawn tight. “Lately I’ve begun to think that perhaps… perhaps there is something different waiting for me below. Do you see?”

Silver blinks, slowly, and sits up. He lays a hand on Flint’s thigh, perhaps to signal that he is not rebuffing him. Loving Silver, Flint is finding, is a gradual and faltering education in boundaries—shoals and reefs and impenetrable shores—and in deliberate silence, the unspoken, the spaces between words. Waiting for Silver to give, and give back.

“I cannot turn back from this path,” Silver mutters, rolling his shoulders. “Even if I wanted to.”

“No. You can’t. But it is not too late to turn your gaze forward, and make your peace with it however you must. Only, make it _mean_ something, and we will go home, and we will leave all legends at the door.”

“It isn’t that simple.”

“No,” agrees Flint, and he remembers the chary notes of a harpsichord, the place by the door to hang his coat, blood-stamped linen, slow trudge back to clarity, smell of violet and hyssop. “But it’s a start.”

The somnolent forest contracts and expands and breathes around, above, underneath them. Flint stands and gathers their clothes, quietly waiting for Silver to stop searching for a way out.

Silver peers up at him, alive and dewy and matted, somehow no less a mystery to Flint than he had been before this new intimacy, the night sky reflected in his eyes a promise of a protean future.

“Yes,” Silver answers eventually.

* * *

_coda_

The stars are expanding and melting into each other, sharp tails extending to all sides and linking two, and four, and more until the sky is agleam with tear-bleared starlight. He is alone on the deck. He is glad to be alone. He is alone in beholding the whole of the heavens laid out in front of him, for him. He is not alone at all.

Thomas is not up there. For ten years, Flint has been looking up, when he ought to have been looking out. His neck is sore, from all the looking, but he can bear it, for Miranda. Looking up for her will be easier, now that he will have Thomas to ease the ache.

To be buried at sea, drifting beneath the billows, his bones to coral and eyes to pearl: he had accepted his portion even before he had met the Hamiltons. Such was the lot of a baseborn sailor. There is no reason why he should not still accept it; and after all, he has heard, distantly, and over and over through the years, the grave tantalizing tolling of the bell. Slipping hastily towards his own finality, he has heard those cloven footsteps tread the boards in his wake.

Not yet.

Before, Flint had fallen into the sort of sublime joy beyond the somatic, unimaginable to a God-fearing man. Between then and now, he has glimpsed the possibility of such joy again, touched but undiminished by the ceaseless circling of time. What was before can be again, in a different light.

The ship rocks, cradled by the ocean. Belowdeck, two dear people are entwined and waiting for him. Moon-silver glimmers wetly on the waves. Ahead, a slice of land pierces the capacious night.

 _Soon, Thomas_ , he vows to the horizon, as

**Author's Note:**

> been chipping away at this off and on for a few months and it's still not quite where I want it, so I guess this is an exercise in accepting imperfection lol
> 
> some lines I shamelessly cribbed:  
> “Extend themselves upon the moss.” Aphra Behn, “The Disappointment” (a hilarious poem about a guy losing his boner)  
> “Of his bones are coral made: / Those are pearls that were his eyes.” Shakespeare, The Tempest  
> “float upon his watery bier.” Milton, Lycidas  
> “Two black voids, fore and aft.” Nabokov, Speak, Memory  
> (+ meditations on time deeply inspired by Joanna Newsom's album Divers)
> 
> i'm loosedindecember on tumblr :)


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